Ohio Truck Shield, a joint program of the Ohio Trucking Association and the Ohio Highway Patrol launched earlier this year, has already trained 500 truck drivers to watch for criminal activity on the roads.
The Truck Shield program grew out of the patrol’s realization that a little bit of training can go a long way, Highway Patrol Spokeswoman Lt. Anne Ralston told Transport Topics.
The program trains truckers to spot suspicious activity that could signal driving while impaired, terrorist activity, human trafficking or drug transporting.
“We can all be taught, ‘Call if you see an impaired driver, call if you see driver activity, call if you see human trafficking,’ ” Ralston said. “But if we’re not educating people in what those things look like, then are we getting quality information as a law enforcement agency?”
Truck drivers who see something suspicious call into a 677 phone line set up especially for them to contact the highway patrol.
Law enforcement officers cannot be everywhere at every moment and there are “lots more truck drivers out there than there are law enforcement officers and [the drivers] know best what’s going on,” Ralston said.
Highway Patrol Superintendent Col. John Born reached out to the OTA asking it to be a partner in the training program, said Larry Woolum, OTA’s director of regulatory affairs.
“We enjoy a very good working relationship with the highway patrol and it goes both ways,” said Woolum. He and OTA President Larry Davis are former highway patrol officers.
“[We are] both professional organizations that are working for the same . . . goal, highway safety,” Woolum said. “It’s the environment that our drivers work in that we share with the motoring public and there’s criminals out there using our highways.”
